


New Partners

by AJHall



Series: LoPiverse [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, LoPiverse - Fandom
Genre: Canon Divergent universe, Gen, LoPiverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 15:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2433221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/pseuds/AJHall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the darkest days of Recent Events, Neville Longbottom is assigned a new partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Partners

Neville suppressed a gasp. High Command had told him his new partner had been passed fit for combat only in the last day or two, but his first glance at Draco suggested that, even so, the war must be going even worse than he suspected for them even to be considering using someone so skeletal and wasted on active service. Of course — his mouth twisted into a wry grimace — there were undoubtedly reasons why High Command might consider this particular fighting unit wholly expendable.

Draco, clearly catching the expression though unable to read the thinking behind it responded with a rather pale shadow of the arrogant smirk he had trade marked at school. To Neville, who had experienced Draco’s full repertoire of Sarcastic Facial Variations, arranged for Lips and Solo Eyebrow for the best part of seven years at Hogwarts, it looked like a distinctly sub-standard effort.

_But all those times he knew he had all the money and connections in the world to back them up if anyone decided to take it personally. And a matched pair of heavies deployed on either side in case the connections didn’t get there before the punch landed._

Neville extended a hand. “Hello, anyway. It’s good to see you. I hope you’re feeling a lot better?”

As though by a sponge, Draco’s smirk was wiped off his face instantly, to be replaced by surprised wariness.

“Yes, thanks,” he responded with cold politeness.

Mentally, Neville squared his shoulders. He had made this resolve when High Command had first indicated to him that he would be working with a partner again, after the last six months on his own, and had no intention of abandoning it even now he was aware who that partner was.

“They tell me we’re going to be working together,” he began. “I just thought that — there was something you ought to know before we kicked off.”

A complex expression crossed Draco’s face; Neville thought it looked like pain, mixed with a kind of exhaustion, perhaps the exhaustion suffered by someone who had lived with constant pain for so long that even agony had become boring.

“If it’s the _I don’t like murdering Death Eater scum but I’ll work with you if I’m ordered to_ spiel, you can assume I’ve heard it.”

“It’s nothing like that!” His voice was sharp with indignation. Draco raised a questioning eyebrow.

“What, then?”

“Well, I just thought you had a right to know — the reason I’ve been working solo for the last six months is that — well, I blew up my last partner.”

Neville was not sure what reaction he’d been expecting. Certainly not Draco looking calmly across at him and saying:

“Oh, I know that.”

“You know?”

“Well — I presume we are talking about Gerry Abbott, that appallingly self-righteous Hufflepuff about three years older than us? Went round telling everyone he'd deliberately not entered the Triwizard Tournament because he didn’t want to risk deflecting the Goblet’s support for Cedric Diggory?”

Neville nodded. “Er, yes. Him. How — ah, who told you?”

He had known, of course, that someone would drop a hint or other to anyone chosen to partner him, which was one reason besides natural inclination that he had determined on honesty from the outset. But he was shocked to realise that it had happened so soon.

_Someone on this base dislikes you even worse than you suspected before._

Draco shrugged. “The Dark Lord. As it happens.”

Neville’s eyes must have registered his absolute shock, because Draco waved his hand in an explanatory gesture. “Well, strictly speaking, not to me personally. The Dark Lord, I assure you, was never on gossip-swapping terms with me, contrary to the image I might have tried to foster at one point. No, he told my father, but I was in the room. My father always used to try to get me in on as many audiences with the Dark Lord as he could: I think it was some sort of attempt to register my features with him, so that if he went off in a murderous rage, at least he might realise I wasn’t your average anonymous victim — so he might think it would at least be polite to have an actual personal motive before he did me in.”

“Sounds lovely.”

Draco’s lips quirked. “Things they never tell you in Death Eater recruitment spiels.”

His frozen brain was still trying to get itself round the main, impossible statement. If Draco was telling the truth, not only was his lethal incompetence notorious among his own side, but apparently was the subject of idle chit-chat between He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his highest-placed lieutenants. Neville gulped.

_And to think I used to have sleepless nights worrying about what tales Snape might be swapping about me in the Staff-Room._

“How — how did the subject come up?”

Draco looked surprised. “Well, naturally they’d be worried. Suddenly losing one of their highest placed inside agents, without a breath of news about how you lot had got on to him in the first place, or how long you’d been feeding him duff intelligence before you’d decided to eliminate him? How would you expect them to react? Of course it sparked a huge flap. All his reports had to be independently gone into and cross-checked. The Dark Lord delegated a top down review of the whole of our intelligence system to my father. Somewhat ironically, as it turned out—”

For the first time Draco’s pale drawn features were looking animated.

“—My father then got talked into sub-delegating it to ma, so I can’t think what’s happening at Death Eater Central now she’s defected. Everyone from the Dark Lord down having complete kneazles, I wouldn’t be surprised. I would say, I wish I could see it, but you’ll appreciate why that isn’t entirely true.”

Neville was still having difficulties.

“Gerry Abbott was working for you — er, I mean, them?”

“Of course. One of the Dark Lord’s earliest recruits, actually. You’d be surprised, but Hufflepuffs outnumber Slytherins about two to one in the Dark Lord’s army. It’s amazing how useful to a conspiracy a group of people who are by definition loyal, hardworking and underappreciated can be. But — look — if you didn’t know he was a traitor, how come you came to blow him up in the first place?”

He could feel his face flaming. He looked resolutely down at his boots.

“Oh, come off it, Draco. You were at school with me. How do you _think_?” he muttered.

He had not known what he was expecting. Certainly not a snort of irrepressible laughter. He looked up. Draco’s drawn, pointed features had been completely transformed by a grin of pure mischief. His eyes danced.

“Oh, if only the Dark Lord knew! All that panic! All that running around in circles! All those random blastings of hexes all around the house! Of course, all his other spies — oh, don’t worry. Once ma came over (I told you she’d been running the intelligence review, didn’t I?) they managed to pick them up more or less intact. Anyway, obviously the other spies passed on the accident story, but naturally everyone assumed that it was — what do the Muggles call it? Oh yes, plausible deniability, that was it. You lot have grabbed the moral high ground as the Good Guys, after all. Can’t tarnish that sort of reputation by being associated with assassination. You may be surprised to hear this, Longbottom, but your reputation in Death Eater circles is as a smooth and ice-cold covert killer.”

Neville couldn’t help it. He broke down and giggled helplessly for some moments.

“Any chance of getting one of your old colleagues to pass the word to Grandma? She’d practically fall off her perch to think anyone thought I was competent at anything.”

“In fact,” Draco added, “I rather assumed that they’d paired me with you to send a message. You know: we have ways of getting rid of those whose loyalty we mistrust. What a relief to think the only thing I’ve got to worry about is the risks of you killing me by accident. To say nothing of the fact that with your reputation, most of the other side will have definite doubts about tackling us. You know, Longbottom, it’ll only take Potter to do something suicidally self-sacrificing and undeservedly successful, and we might actually stand a chance of getting out of this mess alive after all.”

Neville grinned, and scrambled to his feet. “Well, I think you’re completely mad to take it that way. But since you have—”

He gestured to the door. “First to the bar, buys the beers?”


End file.
